New technologies drive value and reshape relationship between business and IT, CIO Paula Tolliver says

Under CIO Paula Tolliver, Intel’s IT group has continued to implement advanced analytics and machine learning technologies.
Photo:
Intel Corp.

Intel Corp.’s information technology department deployed machine learning capabilities and other technologies that improved product time-to-market by nearly 39 weeks and generated $500 million in revenue for the company’s sales and marketing division, according to the chip maker’s latest IT annual report.

The report lays out the performance of Intel’s IT department over the course of last year. While it certainly can be used to advertise to customers how Intel is using its own technology, it also demonstrates the tangible value IT brings to the company.

It’s the first such report for Paula Tolliver, who was named chief information officer in August after the promotion of her predecessor, Kim Stevenson. Ms. Tolliver previously was chief information officer at Dow Chemical Co.

Last year, Intel cut IT spending to 2.3% of revenue from 2.5% in 2015, according to the report. Ms Tolliver said the IT budget remained about flat from the prior year.

Under Ms. Tolliver, Intel’s IT group has continued to implement advanced analytics and machine learning technologies across the company as it works to develop new products and spur growth in new business lines to fend off competitors like Nvidia Corp. and ARM Holdings PLC.

One example is a new machine learning platform, the Coverage Lift Framework, that helps Intel more quickly validate product design and performance before manufacturing begins. Known as CLIFF, the platform browses through thousands of historical test records to find patterns and identify hidden bugs that humans may have missed during the design process.

Since launching CLIFF last year with 18 product development teams, Intel has improved product validation times by eight weeks, Ms. Tolliver said. The tool has spotted 30% more new issues on each run compared to traditional tests without CLIFF, and has allowed Intel to test 60 times more product features and functionalities than before. It also identified more than 20 new bugs in one product.

In 2015 and 2016, Intel IT also has worked to connect sales and marketing data and streamline business processes across the organization. New machine learning and predictive analytics tools also help Intel target customers with specific deals. To date, those projects have helped sales and marketing generate more than $500 million in revenue, the report says.

Ms. Tolliver says she’s focused on applying machine learning and other emerging technologies across Intel, including its IT department, the supply chain and areas like smart factories, where advanced analytics help the company track equipment performance and analyze billions of data points coming from internet-connected sensors.

“One of the things I find the most exciting about using analytics and AI is that I find it to be much more integral to what the business cares about,” she said. “It requires much more intimacy with the business process and the business that you’re trying to improve.”

The shift has prompted a greater level of collaboration between the two groups, Ms. Tolliver said. Analytics specialists in IT now spend more time learning details of particular business processes, while employees in the business units learn more about how they might implement technologies like AI.

As CIO Journal has reported, the ability for Intel’s CIO to demonstrate the value of the organization’s work changes the relationship from that of a service provider to one that uses technology to solve business problems. Ms. Tolliver says many of her colleagues across Intel now know technologies like machine learning can save money or create new value, shifting the conversation away from purely dollars and cents and toward more strategic metrics like speed and productivity.

“It’s much more collaborative than just IT convincing the business of the value.”